She had a private room which she filled with the portraits of her father and with a thousand personal souvenirs, around which she kept up flowers.
Madame de Trecoeur, like the greater number of young girls who marry their cousins, had married very young.

She was left a widow at twenty-eight, and her mother, the Baroness de Pers, who was still living, and who was even of the liveliest, was not long in suggesting discreetly to her the propriety of a second marriage.

After having exhausted the practical and, in fact, quite sensible reasons that seemed to urge that course, the baroness then came down to the sentimental reasons: "In good faith, my poor child," she said, "you have not had, up too this time, your just share of happiness in this world.

I would not speak ill of your husband, since he is dead; but, _entre nous_, he was a horrid brute.
Mon Dieu! charming at times, I grant you,--since I have been caught myself--like all worthless scamps! but in fact, beastly, beastly! Well, certainly, I shall not undertake to say that marriage is ever a state of perfect bliss; nevertheless it is the best thing that has been imagined up to this time, to enjoy life decently among respectable people.

You are in the flower of your age--you are quite good-looking, quite--and, by the way, it will do you no harm to wear your skirts a little higher up behind, with a proper sort of bustle; for you don't even know what they wear now, my poor pet.